My local newspaper carries a proponderance of right-wing columnists. The one below appeared in today's Op-Ed section. This columnist is attempting to poo-pooh all the the 911 conspiracy theorists. Note what he said in paragraph 4. I saw the video some time ago and I don't recall seeing what he's describing. In fact I think he's just out right lying.


Campos: Vast right-wing conspiracy?
Paul Campos
email | bioJuly 18, 2006
Recently I wrote a column that included an offhand comment about how I was pretty sure people who believed the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 terror attacks were pathetic lunatics living in basements, whose Web sites got 10 hits per day. I've since heard from many such people, assuring me that they don't live in basements, that they aren't crazy, and that their Web sites are very popular.
I was also encouraged to check out the "9/11 Truth" movement, for what I was assured was conclusive evidence of an unspeakably evil government plot. Having done so, I've discovered a number of interesting things.

First, the 9/11 Truth movement features a wide variety of claims, ranging from the quite plausible (the government's negligence prior to the attacks was not wholly displeasing to certain members of the Bush administration), to the wildly improbable (the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolitions), to the certifiably insane.

The latter category includes claims such as that 9/11 was a plot to steal $160 billion in gold buried under the World Trade Center (this theory is put forth in the film Loose Change, which has purportedly sold 100,000 copies); that no airplanes hit the towers (the theory here involves sophisticated holographic imaging equipment); and that the passengers supposedly killed on the four flights hijacked that day were all herded onto United Airlines Flight 93, which landed safely in Cleveland before the passengers were transferred to a top-secret NASA facility.

If you're curious, you can also find plenty of stuff about how it was all really the work of satanists, or an elite secret society that was set up several thousand years ago by space aliens. (A morbidly amusing sidelight to the 9/11 Truth movement is that many of its members have become convinced that other members are either unwitting dupes or conscious agents of the government, who are propagating obviously outlandish theories for the purpose of discrediting the movement as a whole).

Anyway, in a couple of respects my comment was clearly wrong: 9/11 conspiracy theories have gained quite a bit of cultural traction, and they've garnered a number of at least superficially respectable advocates. (This group includes people like former assistant treasury secretary and Wall Street Journal associate editor Paul Craig Roberts, BYU physics professor Steven Jones, and Morgan Reynolds, former chief economist for the Department of Labor).

Indeed, the most noteworthy aspect of the 9/11 Truth movement is its almost complete invisibility in the mainstream media. For example, my own ignorance can be explained by such facts as that, as far as I could discover, The New York Times has run exactly one story that even mentions the movement's central claim: that the World Trade Center towers were brought down by controlled demolition (the story immediately dismissed this as absurd).

Which leads me to suggest a little theory of my own: Suppose that on Sept. 11, 2001, Al Gore had been president. Suppose further that Saddam Hussein had plotted to kill Gore's father. And suppose that from the first days of the Gore administration, plans had been drawn up to invade Iraq. My guess is that, within a few months, some of the less obviously crazy 9/11 Truth types would have found a forum for their theories on The Wall Street Journal's editorial page. The more unhinged advocates would start popping up on Fox News specials with titles such as 9/11: What Really Happened?

In the blogosphere, academics like Glenn Reynolds would post chin-scratching ruminations, demanding a "truly independent investigation of these troubling charges," which would in turn inspire demagogues of the Michelle Malkin variety to screech nonstop about "the biggest cover-up in American history."

All this would bully journalists into writing "balanced" stories about even the nuttiest allegations, in an attempt to counter right-wing charges regarding how "liberal media bias" was keeping such allegations from getting the serious attention they deserved. And eventually 38 percent of the public would believe Al Gore blew up the World Trade Center. How's that for a conspiracy theory?



Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. Reach him at paul.campos@colorado.edu.

You can watch Loose Change for free at Google video: http://video.google.com/videosearch?q=911 Just scroll down.

Thanks, ulTRAX.
I just found out that there is a Loose Change II and right at the very end it did mention some gold in one of the WTC buildings, however, I still haven't seen anything about the toweres not being hit by 'real' planes.

quote:

Originally posted by Simon Sezz:
Thanks, ulTRAX.
I just found out that there is a Loose Change II and right at the very end it did mention some gold in one of the WTC buildings, however, I still haven't seen anything about the toweres not being hit by 'real' planes.

I don't think LC makes that charge, but they certainly do raise questions whether a passenger plane hit the Pentagon. After they made their case they have me wondering.

This is the part of the article I had problem with. He said "no airplanes". The technique of many of the rightwing columnists is they slip in a few lies and then go on to setup a straw man argument like Campos did as he went on speculate about what Gore would have done.

"The latter category includes claims such as that 9/11 was a plot to steal $160 billion in gold buried under the World Trade Center (this theory is put forth in the film Loose Change, which has purportedly sold 100,000 copies); that no airplanes hit the towers (the theory here involves sophisticated holographic imaging equipment); and that the passengers supposedly killed on the four flights hijacked that day were all herded onto United Airlines Flight 93, which landed safely in Cleveland before the passengers were transferred to a top-secret NASA facility."

quote:

Originally posted by Simon Sezz:
"The latter category includes claims such as that 9/11 was a plot to steal $160 billion in gold buried under the World Trade Center (this theory is put forth in the film Loose Change,...

THAT'S what LC is all about? Yikes!

This all reminds me that I don't think I ever finished watching LC even though I downloaded it and showed the part about the Pentagon to several friends.

quote:

THAT'S what LC is all about? Yikes!

That's what Campos and people like him would want you to believe - assuming you haven't already seen. It's one of the old strawman tricks. Find the most outrageous, least plausible elements of your opponent's argument, twist them around, and inject a few lies and thus divert the attention away from the position you're trying to defend.

There are already sites popping up debunking the (911 commission) debunkers the same way the tried to debunk the Michael Moore's movie and the JFK conspiracy. They can't afford to allow the movement to grow to big.

Now Simon,

I've not been formally introduced to you.

Hi.

You and ulTRAX seem like a good pair.

A couple of days after 9/11, I read a brief, matter-of-fact item in the Vancouver Sun saying that a large stash of gold that had been stored in the lower levels of the WTC had been removed in an armoured car. I don't recall any mention of who removed it, where they took it, or how they got it out from the smouldering ruins. Perhaps it was accessible through a tunnel. It does seem odd that this gold is almost never mentioned even by conspiracy buffs.

Another seldom-mentioned fact is that a huge portion of one floor of one WTC tower was used to store fuel oil. IIRC, it was one of the lower floors - 5th or 7th. A dangerous place for somebody to keep their fuel oil, it seems to me. But why didn't we see that floor explode as the building heated up?

In planning the 1993 WTC attacks, Osama bin Laden *did* cooperate with Saddam Hussein. This would seem like a natural factoid for Bush to trot out when trying to sell his Iraq war, but he never mentioned it! Perhaps the fact that the FBI also had a hand in that 1993 plot made him reluctant to bring up the subject, lest people start looking for federal involvement in 9/11.

quote:

Now Simon,

I've not been formally introduced to you.

Hi.

You and ulTRAX seem like a good pair.

Hi Kate,

Now that we've been formally introduced, actually I haven't been formally introduced to ulTRAX.

Hi UlTRAX,

Now I got that out of the way.....

and Kate you were saying, "You and ulTRAX seem like a good pair." .....of What?

quote:

"You and ulTRAX seem like a good pair." .....of What?

Hard headed guys, with some facts, and some moxie.

Thanks, Kate.

I'm just an average Joe looking for the truth. We're all drowning in this big sea of information and yet the powers that be are keeping us in a predicament of not knowing anything but believing everything. I raised the issue in this thread because I'm constantly finding stuff I suspect is false or misleading but I have no way of verifying. I figured someone on this board would know.

This is for Geneva:

Hi and thank you for your input.

You said:
"In planning the 1993 WTC attacks, Osama bin Laden *did* cooperate with Saddam Hussein. This would seem like a natural factoid for Bush to trot out when trying to sell his Iraq war, but he never mentioned it! Perhaps the fact that the FBI also had a hand in that 1993 plot made him reluctant to bring up the subject, lest people start looking for federal involvement in 9/11."

Taken at face value this would seem a bit out of character with most of the other stuff we've been told. In other word it doesn't seem to make sense....but. There are a number of things that doesn't make sense. And that could be from our vantage point, we little people can't see the bigger picture. We could be just barely hacking at the leaves when we should be digging way down for the roots.

As you alluded the FBI ala Bushco could have had a hand in and digging too deep would expose them. Now I hear a similar scenario regarding the Neocons attempt to bust Clinton. I've heard that some of the allegation in the "Clinton Chronicles" were true (like the drug dealings) except the Rethugs couldn't use that charge because it would implicate them. So they had to resort to trying to trick him with the pejury thing.

Now take the Saddam trial fiasco. Why didn't they take it to the world court? Why isn't he being tried for the other offenses which are far more heineous than what he's being tried for.

Take Bill Clinton; why is he sucking up to the Bushes after the way they treated him? And supporting Lieberman who trashed him? That doesn't make sense. I think a lot of these people are in together - dems and repugs.

How about WWII, when Prescot Bush, Henry Ford gave aid to Hitler. The Cold war where we had given technology (or let them steal) to the USSR. That didn't make sense!

Yes, I've heard and read about the so called hegelian dialectic about the controlled struggle to achieve a prescribed goal and if you look at the PNAC statement you can kinda see that. Now lets project into the future. What would that goal be? That's something for us common folk to wake up and think about.

As for the gold bullions in the basement of the WTC, I had never heard that, and this Paul Campos article was making it sound like some real hair-brained conspiracy plot and making it the central point of his ridicule. The second film did mention it as ONE of the reasons for 911.

The goal is not a pretty picture.

What 'final solution'?

Clinton was no saint. Yes, there is good evidence that he and the elder Bush were in cahoots as smugglers, and a number of people who got on their case met with untimely ends. Up until the Bush administration, it tended to be *Republicans* who got killed in small plane crashes.

But there's a huge difference between an intelligent, practical sociopath out to feather his nest, and a half-witted insane sociopath controlled by mobsters ready to kill the goose that lays the golden eggs and divvy up the carcass!

Conspiracy writer Al Martin (no fan of Clinton!) says the big difference between the two is that Clinton stole only a modest amount for himself, while Bush steals incalculable amounts for all his buddies. Though he shafted the poor, Clinton did balance the budget and leave the nation in better financial shape than he had found it. Bush shafted the poor even worse, but he has also bankrupted the nation by spending as if there were no tomorrow. (But then, according to his religious mentors, there isn't!)

Even mafiosa try to do right by their home towns. It's hard to figure a motive for what appears to be the deliberate and systematic destruction of the whole country. My roommate and I were discussing that question last night. Our best guess was that Bush himself is simply too dim to understand what he's doing; he drifts around in a chemical fog and goes where he is pointed. But his controllers are using him as a boogeyman in the dialectic toward globalization.

The rest of the world, except for Israel and Britain, is now united against Bush. Americans of all stripes are starting to clue in that they are living in a dictatorship. Soon the economy, public utilities, food distribution system and transportation system will be in such a shambles that everyone will have to notice. Then people will welcome with open arms ANYONE who can get rid of Bush, restore peace, put the fires out, get the lights back on, and start cleaning up the mess.

Under this scenario, the ousting of Bush will just be theatre. The coup has already happened.

Maybe it's so tempting to believe in New World Order plots because the alternative - that our situation really is as out-of-control as it appears on the surface - is too awful to contemplate!

quote:

Conspiracy writer Al Martin (no fan of Clinton!) says the big difference between the two is that Clinton stole only a modest amount for himself, while Bush steals incalculable amounts for all his buddies.

Geneva, I agree. But we need to stop settling for mediocrity. I have ole Al's Book. He's way "out there". I researched some of the things he said and I couldn't catch him in a lie. He also give a good explantion on how the "system" works. Lots of coverups, murder, and bribery. Most people don't even have a clue as to how much of a stranglehold these "crooks" have on the rest of us and the longer they stay the tighter their grip.

If there's any is any hope left it come have to come via the democratic party. There are few good democrats brave enough to stick their neck out, but they could just as easy go along to get along. Take the money and not rocxk the boat. Al Martin gives an account of a Texas congressman getting his car raked with bullets because he was investigating the "wrong" people. The first thing they need to do is start changing the rules so that the real power would reside in the hands of the people - not corporations and money. Instant Runoff Voting (IRV). The repubs will never support it, but I believe that there may be some progressive dems who will.

Geneva, how do you like BC. A couple of years ago I was joking with a friend and I said that if Bush got re-selected I was moving to Canada.

Simon,

The writer is either uninformed about Loose Change, a liar, or both. The film doesn't allege no planes hit the Twin Towers. It doesn't allege 9/11 was a plot to steal 160 billion in gold. The writer is simply a fraud and not worth wasting time on. There are a lot of them out there now, debunkers offering shallow and uninformed "reviews" of various 9/11 truth films and sites. Yet despite this, the ranks of people who disbelieve the official story continues to grow, because the government's tale is such a cartoon fantasy that anyone who examines it in depth and with an open mind sees it has no credibility.

It is one of the bigger ironies of this debate that what Campos finds most “wildly improbable” (the controlled demolitions of the WTC towers) is in fact the most transparent evidence of government involvement in 9/11. But sometimes truth is stranger than fiction. The perpetrators evidently learned Hitler’s “Big Lie” method well.

Mem

quote:

All this was inspired by the principle - which is quite true in itself - that in The Big Lie there is always a certain force of credibility; because the broad masses of a nation are always more easily corrupted in the deeper strata of their emotional nature than consciously or voluntarily, and thus in the primitive simplicity of their minds they more readily fall victims to The Big Lie than the small lie, since they themselves often tell small lies in little matters but would be ashamed to resort to large-scale falsehoods. It would never come into their heads to fabricate colossal untruths, and they would not believe that others could have the impudence to distort the truth so infamously. Even though the facts which prove this to be so may be brought clearly to their minds, they will still doubt and waver and will continue to think that there may be some other explanation. For the grossly impudent lie always leaves traces behind it, even after it has been nailed down, a fact which is known to all expert liars in this world and to all who conspire together in the art of lying.

- Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf

Thanks Memory,
I was writing a letter to my editor and I wanted to get my facts before I mailed it. As I had gotten my draft finished when I found out that there was a sceond edition of Loose Change. Right near the end it did mention some gold in one of the building, but it didn't go as far as to say that this was THE reason for 911. So I made a slight change and said he was distorting - not lying and suggested that the reader view the film for himself.

Quote from Geneva:

quote:

A couple of days after 9/11, I read a brief, matter-of-fact item in the Vancouver Sun saying that a large stash of gold that had been stored in the lower levels of the WTC had been removed in an armoured car. I don't recall any mention of who removed it, where they took it, or how they got it out from the smouldering ruins. Perhaps it was accessible through a tunnel. It does seem odd that this gold is almost never mentioned even by conspiracy buffs.

FYI, C-Span is airing a panel discussion Sat. @ 8 pm Easter time about 911 truths.

Yes, thanks for reminding me. I've already sent word out to lots of folks here in Humboldt County.

C-SPAN to Broadcast “9/11 and the Neo-Con Agenda” Conference Panel


C-SPAN is scheduled to air a panel presentation from the “9/11 and the Neo-Con Agenda” conference Saturday, July 29th, at 5pm (PDT) and again at 8pm, Pacific Standard Time. “A decision that many of us were waiting on with baited breath - C-Span's scheduling of the American Scholars Symposium highlights - infuses the 9/11 truth movement with a fresh injection of credibility and exposure to more mainstream audiences,” wrote Paul Joseph Watson of PrisonPlanet.Com.


“The panel features incredible presentations by 9/11 Scholars for Truth founder James Fetzer, BYU Physics Professor Steven Jones, President of the Institute for Space and Security Studies Dr. Robert M. Bowman, Lt. Col., USAF, ret., Filmmaker and Radio Broadcaster Alex Jones, and Terrorism Expert Webster Tarpley. C-SPAN viewers will witness what many consider to be the most hard hitting conference to date including the most professional and credible speakers ever assembled,” Watson stated.

C-SPAN can also be viewed free on the Internet at www.c-span.org <http://www.c-span.org/> .

####

I notified a few people myself. I had told my editor that I that although I didn't agree with Paul Campos, I think that he failed to debunk the 911 truth movement and I thanked my paper for printing the column since this subject has been mainly taboo in the mainstream media and perhap it could open up a dialog. Today I sent them an FYI on the C-Span program.

My roommate, who has a substantial background in science and mathematics, has done the math and says that only a controlled demolition can explain the way in which the WTC towers collapsed. Tower wasn't even on fire!

As for Canadian and BC politics - well, the dog's tail will eventually follow the dog's head, but so far we're still a cut above the USA. We have no foreign wars going (that I know of). We allow gay marriage, medical marijuana, abortion on demand, and sex education. We also have a national health plan, thanks to Tommy Douglas, a preacher who briefly attained some political power. Not even the most rabid rightwinger will openly argue against health care, though they keep trying to undermine it secretly.

OTOH, the Far Right are currently in power both in BC and our federal government. Locally, they achieved this by hijacking the BC Liberal Party - so now the "l" word has fallen out of favour here, too!
http://www.mindprod.com/politics/bcpolitics.html

Nationally, Prime Minister Stephen Harper (a.k.a. Bush Lite) was voted in after his predecessor Paul Martin got involved in a scandal - a fairly minor one, as these things go. The press chose to ignore the large stash of cocaine found on his yacht, and nailed him for lesser offenses. http://www.mindprod.com/politics/martin.html

The Far Right is a minority in Canada, but with a multiparty system, the Left vote is split several ways while the Right follows the leader. Before they became Far Right, the Liberals were our moderates, the mainstream leftists were the New Democrats, and the mainstream rights were the Progressive Conservatives.

Perfectly clear? As U.N. Special Envoy Stephen Lewis termed it, our Parliament is a "fine crucible of madness"! The far-right parties keep changing their names as voters clue into what they're all about. It's sort of a shell game.

Religious fanaticism isn't one of our big issues, fortunately. The demographics in Canada are dramatically different on that score.

The Green Party is the spoiler. It is still attracting many votes from the Left, but has begun courting the Right. Its national head used to belong to the far-right Progressive Conservatives(!), so it may have been hijacked, too. In the USA, I read, the Republican Party was the largest donor to Ralph Nader's campaign when he was running as a Green candidate.

Our current Prime Minister's stance was perfectly depicted by a cartoon in today's paper. It shows Dubya driving a tank while a diminutive Harper, perched on the hood on a tricycle, is going: "Brrrrrm!"

quote:

As for Canadian and BC politics - well, the dog's tail will eventually follow the dog's head, but so far we're still a cut above the USA

.

Are you saying Canada is trending toward the US? I hope not. It seems like some of the countries to the south are beginning to trend away from the US. I'm reading Stephen Kinzer's Overthrow and it make you aware of how much the US has tried to influence other countries. We have this habit of calling everyone who doesn't agree with us socialist, leftist, or communist, not respecting that other countries just want to chart their own course. To me this has been the crux of our foreign policies failures.

I suppose their are a few advantages to the Parlaimetary system. You at least get some proportional representation and when your prime minister really screws up you don't have to go through long impeachment process. I hope that one day we change our system of divide and conquer which in reality hardly represent anyone - except the the top 5%.

Yes, Canada has been moving slowly towwards "harmonization" with the USA ever since I first moved here in 1985. It's part of the grand scheme for globalization. A cartoon from that era showed a dog with a head like Prime Minister Brian Mulroney, being led on a leash by Ronald Reagan. This is top-down, however. It's taking place against the objections of the populace.

Unfortunately, though we are multi-party, we really don't have proportional representation. A party that wins by 1% in every district can end up with 100% of the seats. And naturally the party in power redraws the boundaries in their own favour before an election! Last time around, out of 70+ seats in Parliament, the Official Opposition had only two.

BC recently had a referendum on switching over to a proportional representation system, which was narrowly defeated. Well over 50% voted yes, but it needed over 60% to pass. Unfortunately, the pro-rep system they're considering is cumbersome and hard to understand. But it would still beat the winner-takes-all system that we have now.

It was in BC that the opposition party had only two seats. Representation was more balanced federally.